Geoscience Reference
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revised by E. Anthony Wrigley by means of a fruitful dialogue with the classical
texts which, along with limits, also noted the advances in productivity that could be
achieved within the pre-industrial economies
particularly through trade special-
ization and urbanization.
29
Taking into account the approach of Adam Smith, and
the range of changes or adaptations in demographic patterns studied by the Cam-
bridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure, Wrigley
—
s work
has contributed to better identify the actual limits and feasible possibilities to
remove them ahead.
While Anthony Wrigley has never been directly interested in the interaction
between society and nature as such, his most important contribution has opened a
very important bridge between economic and environmental history by placing the
emphasis on the characteristics of energy supply based on capturing solar energy
through photosynthesis. In order to stress its relevance, he has coined the term
'
'
to highlight the fact that when any economic activity had to rely
on the tiny fraction of solar energy that is being stored in the form of biomass
through photosynthesis:
organic economy
'
] neither the process of modernization nor the presence
of a capitalist economic system was capable of guaranteeing sustained growth
[
“
[
…
] both could help to ensure that the possibilities for
growth offered by such economies were exploited effectively
…
]
”
; though he adds,
“
[
…
.
30
The results found by reconstructing the long-term historical series of energy
intensities of Sweden, Italy, United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Spain,
31
seem to
con
”
rm the view forwarded by Anthony Wrigley. From a long-term perspective,
and when animal work and human labour are included together with fossil fuels and
other modern energy carriers, there is no apparent single inverted-U Kuznets curve
in the historical trend of the energy consumption per unit of GDP. What appears is
rather something that resembles a downward staircase, or a winding path following
an N-shape form (Fig.
2.5
). This outcome clearly shows that in earlier pre-industrial
times the energy cost per GDP unit was higher than that in the subsequent industrial
period. The reason for this seems very simple: before the arrival of large amounts of
fossil fuels, considerable amounts of primary energy were needed to obtain a single
unit of value added into the market by means of the energy conversion of biomass.
This is exactly what Wrigley hypothesised.
Long-term historical series of energy intensity per unit of GDP also show an
increasing convergence between countries. While in a biomass-based energy sys-
tem climatic conditions and natural resource endowment entailed big regional
differences in the amount of primary energy consumed, the common adoption of a
new set of coal or oil-based converters and technologies led to greater parity. Yet
convergence in energy intensities might not be complete, because latecomers do not
always use a factor endowment as appropriate as leading countries to the adoption
of new technologies deployed. While the initial delay allowed them to adopt more
29
Wrigley (
2010
).
30
Wrigley (
2004
). See also Kander et al. (
2013
).
31
Kander (
2008
), Warde (
2007
) and Gales et al. (
2007
).
